


every storm that comes, also comes to an end

by johnny-and-dora (sian_jpg)



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: (copyright em (elsaclack)), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Missing Scene, One Shot, Post 4x03, Soft Jake, angst if you squint, bc that sure is what the majority of my fics are, flungst?, is there a genre for just jake and amy in bed together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 06:27:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15528129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sian_jpg/pseuds/johnny-and-dora
Summary: "Where can a guy get a fifty piece orchestra when he needs one?"or, spring hill medical clinic, coral palms, florida. september 2016, 4:05am.peralta, j, admitted at 10:28pm for gunshot wound to the left leg.(or, the one where jake and amy finally,finally, get a real moment alone)(post 4x03)





	every storm that comes, also comes to an end

Jake, inevitably, dreams of _her_.

It’s familiar now, achingly so. He dreams, often exclusively, of Amy Santiago, as he has nearly every night since this hellish swampy nightmare started – the way her shiny ponytail swings as she flicks through a case file, the way her pantsuits always remain pristine even when they tend to end up spending most of the night crumpled on his bedroom floor, the way she uses him as her own personal space heater, curled up against his body like a physical part of him he didn’t even know he was missing – and now he misses it more than ever.

It’s fragments, mostly, that cloud his subconscious - the little things that he’s made himself sick replaying over and over again in a desperate attempt to make sure he doesn’t forget even the tiniest detail.

He thinks he might miss the way she laughs, smiles, glares, looks at him more than he’s ever missed anything before.

And yeah, okay, he often dreams of _them_ , too. Even more often in daylight hours when the blistering sunshine and the flip flops and the feeling of having your heart ripped out of your chest all gets a little hard to handle. He dreams of their perfect Hollywood reunion more than he’d ever casually admit - gleefully running at full speed towards each other, in the precinct or at the airport or in slow motion through an extremely romantic sunlit field of luscious golden wheat all while a fifty piece orchestra’s symphony swells to an undeniably epic climax in the background.

(Being _Larry_ , also somewhat inevitably, comes with having a lot of time on your hands. After a few months, and a lot of daytime straight to TV movies, it just seemed like the precinct wasn’t going to be enough.)

He’s come to expect the equally as familiar heavy drop in his chest when he wakes – they don’t tell you this in your first WITSEC briefing, but Jake is lucky enough to have some exclusive insider information; standard witness protection procedure seems to be waking up every morning feeling ever-so slightly like there’s a black hole where your heart should be. So that’s great. Really, five-star. He can’t wait to leave a glowing review of his relocation programme when he finally gets out of here.

 _If_ he ever gets out of here.

Not that Jake remembers much of what they told him in his first briefing – he was too preoccupied with the ringing in his ears and the overwhelming feeling of the entire world ending. Now waking up with an almost unbearable weight in his limbs is normality, as is crying in the hot tub and eating in the hot tub and dreaming of his heroic, hella romantic emotional reunions with his girlfriend in the hot tub.

Except - this time when he wakes, the weight doesn’t drop. In fact, there’s very little weight in his body at all - it’s all seemingly replaced by a dull, painful throbbing in his leg and the feeling like he was recently punched in the throat.  He frowns, confused, trying to piece together any recollection of the previous day he can summon with little luck.

He cautiously opens his eyes, blinking in the unfamiliar darkness  - and he can just about make out the outline of a hospital room, twinge of panic in his chest, surge of fear, ice in his veins. That is, until he sees her, and it’s almost like the world stops spinning.

Amy Santiago, real and tangible and an actual, physical, corporeal, human being. Amy Santiago, in the flesh, out cold, curled up in an uncomfortable looking hospital chair about a foot away from him using his favourite hoodie as a makeshift blanket.

About fifty different fireworks in his brain explode at once.

He blinks once, then twice, then squeezes his eyes shut for as long as he can bare before seeing if she’s still there – and the way she softly snores, head tilted slightly back, mouth slightly open, might be his favourite sound in the entire world as he slowly opens his eyes again with a quiet ecstasy at the sight of her still very much occupying a physical form.

_Amy._

“Amy?” It comes out all dry, gravelly and raw, barely audible – but her eyes immediately snap open anyway, glinting with a hundred different emotions at once as she practically jumps upright. He instantly feels himself relax, dedicating even fibre of his currently barely conscious state to falling in love with her all over again - the dark purple bags under her worried eyes, her usually impossibly neat ponytail now loose, dishevelled wiry strands of dark raven hair, still shining, framing her weary face.

She’s never looked more beautiful.

“You’re here.” He manages to croak out, woozy and lightheaded as the lack of sleep and the morphine and the pain meds finally really hits him, dizzily grinning from the effect of being within arms reach of Amy Santiago again. She practically beams at him, an ethereal softness glowing from her entire body that that one shitty, grainy photo he’s had to go off for the past six months couldn’t even begin to capture.

“I’m here.” She says gently, getting up from the chair she’s been crumpled into for...however long they’ve been here. Wherever they actually are. Jake’s detective skillz (with a z, also inevitably) are understandably a little rusty - the morphine induced haze he’s in at the moment which makes the corners of his vision a little fuzzy isn’t exactly helping him deduce anything of note, except that _she’s here_ and that seems to be the only thing in the universe that matters.

The room is still dark, only a fracture of harsh clinical light seeping in from the hallway - but if he squints and cranes his neck in a certain way, he can just about make out the first signs of dawn framed by the window, black charcoal sky streaked carelessly with deep blues and purples. She cautiously reaches for his hand and squeezes it gently, bringing him back crashing down to her.

“Where...”

“Still in Florida, babe. We have to head back in the morning else CJ is going to be even more mad at us, but the nurses promised they’d discharge you and Holt as soon as possible so that you can finally come home.” She’s saying a lot of things that he’s too exhausted to even really process, preoccupied with drinking in every last detail of her face - but he hangs on to her last word like a lifeline, eyes shining with hope. He's getting out of here.

“Home. We got Figgis. We’re going home?”

“Mm-hmm.” She nods, bright with the warmth he’s been so desperately craving, and they gently share a slightly delirious smile. He tries to shift  himself up in bed so he can see her better but pain flares in his leg and he can’t stop himself from wincing, instantly somehow more pained from the flash of distress on her face.

“Are you okay? Do you need anything?” She asks, wide-eyed and nervous, and he shakes his head.

“Nope. Just you.”

She flushes pink, just the smallest, tiniest little bit, and her shoulders loosen. He internally high-fives himself over how smooth he is and quickly realises this is the first time they’ve really had the chance to be alone, at least without the risk of Charles somehow finding a way to get involved.  
Where can a guy get a fifty piece orchestra when he needs one?

He shifts over as to one side of the tiny hospital bed as far as he possibly can, wincing as little as possible, and motions for her to lie down next to him – half-conscious, a half-desperate bid to make up for the seemingly endless nights (he had to stopped counting after sixty, heart sunk dangerously low, that stabbing pain in the heart, that impossible weight in his chest) they’ve been forced to spend apart. She furrows her brow, empathetic but serious, and he sharply realises he’s missed the way she does that, too.

“Jake, I can’t. I’m not even supposed to be here, they only let me stay because Charles wouldn’t stop crying and Rosa threatened them with this knife she somehow has and I had to show them my badge and-“

“Please.” He pleads, voice cracked and heavy with the weight of all the other things he’s not strong or coherent enough to say, and she immediately softens.

He knows she’s always hated how he can do that to her so easily, change her mind, to break the rules, convince her to stay another night, to lie in bed for another five minutes - but tonight he relishes in it. He’s earned this - he _needs_ to hold her – if only as proof that this isn’t all just another dream. He feels stupidly small, stupidly vulnerable, and defenceless – and the weird part is, he doesn’t even want anyone’s sympathy. He just wants her.

“Please, Ames. I just...I need this.”

“Okay.” She relents, far easier than usual, and climbs into the bed next to him, laying her head on his chest – and it’s awkward and cramped and a little uncomfortable, but the smell of her shampoo and the rise and fall of her chest and the buzz he gets at her hum of content is worth it a million times over.

They’re both exhausted, reasonably burnt out from the chaos of the last 24 hours - most of which blurred by so quickly he can barely remember it (though that might just be the lack of sleep and the strength of the pain meds.) Even as one or two things come flooding back, they’re only fragments - the fabric of Gina’s wizard cloak and the cold hard feeling of Figgis’s gun forcefully pressed to his temple and, so ridiculously, obviously, inevitably, _Amy._

Amy punching him in the throat and Amy shooting him in the leg and Amy kissing him, _finally_ , kissing him, holding him, telling him that she loves him, not being physically repulsed by his frosted tips like he was so afraid of.  Amy, bright and shiny and new but not really new at all.

God, he’s missed her so much.  
  
He already feels lighter and happier than he’s been ever since he arrived in this swampy, unbearably warm hellscape - and it’s all down to her, to the way her dark irises blossom with affectionate exasperation and uninhibited joy as she tilts her head upwards to look at him, to the way she fits so neatly in his arms like they were made to hold her, to the way that he thinks that _this is it_. This is all he needs, maybe just for now and maybe _forever_ , if he’s brave enough to think about _that_ for too long without the safety of the distance of it being an a completely hypothetical thing that happens years in the future.

(Yeah, okay, maybe he’d lingered at the sight of the tiny sparkling diamond in the front window of the town’s pawn shop for a second too long, but that was just a particular bout of delirious loneliness. Nobody, especially not Amy, god forbid Charles, needs to know that he almost bought it.)

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Her voice, barely a whisper, still rings out loud and clear to his ears, and he smiles.   
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m so much better now.”

And, because she’s here, and she’s real, and he just can’t quite resist-

“Well, as fine as I can be for someone who just got shot.” He shoots her his best dramatic, pointed and accusing look at her, but it quickly dissolves into a grin before he can stop himself, mainly at the way she reacts, definitely half playing off him and half genuinely offended.

“You told me to shoot you! It was literally to save your life, dumb-ass.”

“Mmmph. Still gotta find a way to make it up to me.” He raises suggestive eyebrows and she rolls her eyes and he grins and it feels like home, it feels like coming home, in a way he could never have predicted when they started, _light and breezy_ , and bright and shiny and new (but not really new at all), what seems like another lifetime ago now.

 “Jake...”  
“M’just saying, I’m gonna be cleared f’some pretty epic light non-strenuous sex real soon.”

 He expects a dark yet warm glare, or at least another eye roll or slight shake of the head – but she just smiles up at him, eyes wide and teary and so full, so overwhelmingly full, _overflowing_ with love and an intimate slight-insomnia induced tenderness that he’s sure is mirrored in the way he looks at her.

There’s a calm, a quiet lull in their storm - something delicate, fragile in the air, like they’re afraid to hold each other too tightly in case the other one breaks. He'll ignore it for this bright, shining moment that feels like finally being able to breathe again.

(He will break, eventually - later, once she has to leave for New York and he’s all alone again in the hospital room despite knowing it’ll be a matter of hours until he sees her, see them all again. He’ll break once she finally gets to takes him by the hand and lead him into whoever’s apartment they’re calling home now, break that night that he gets to sleep in their own bed for the first time in six months, and he’ll break just a little once she can finally place his badge around his neck again and use it to pull him closer so she can press her lips to his.)

(He’ll break and he’ll break and he’ll break, and fragment and fracture and shatter, and she’ll be there every time to pick up the pieces and put him back together - just as he’ll do for her.)    

“I missed you, so much.” She whispers it so quietly, so infinitely soft that he barely hears it. He melts a little anyway.

“I missed you so much too.” He presses a kiss to the top of her head. One night, soon, he’ll whisper in a low voice cracked and splintered with vulnerability just exactly how much _so much_ is - but he can already see her gently drifting off, eyes closed, breathing heavy, and it’s all he needs to lull him back to a gentle, restful sleep, knowing it’s inevitable that any reunion between them was going to be perfect as long as she was in it, fifty piece orchestra be damned.

For the first time in a very long time, he doesn’t seem to dream.

(The nurse walks in on the two detectives a few hours later, initial shock and growing concern for hospital rules and regulation softened by the way peace, warmth and a weird kind of _rightness_ practically radiates from the slow and synchronised rise and fall of their chests. Whispers among her colleagues of a tall tale of mafia bosses and witness protection and the tragic separation of two young lovers somehow suddenly seem more plausible than before – and she sighs deeply, shaking her head as she quietly closes the door, chiding herself at how easily she gives in to giving them just half an hour longer. )

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! this is a bit of an incoherent mess but you'll know i'll take any excuse to write jake and amy in bed together (i am only human, after all)  
> p.s. thank you johanna for lending me that perfect atl lyric to use as a title ily 
> 
> come yell about these two losers with me @johnny-and_dora on tumblr <3


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